Get Out of Your Lane
“Staying in one’s lane all but guarantees that there will be no growth, expansion, or break from routine...”
Dr. Joel A. English is Executive Vice President for the Aviation Institute of Maintenance, Centura College, and Tidewater Tech.
I’m not a fan of the phrase, “Stay in your lane.” It’s certainly an easy phrase to say, especially when you’re feeling criticism or conflict from someone outside of your department. “Stay in your lane” is a common phrase used in many different situations—that’s what makes it a cliché. And using clichéd phrases, because they are familiar, punchy, and commonly accepted, can make us feel like we need no further justification. When we tell someone to stay in their lane, we have the sense that we need no other argument: They should stay out of areas where they have no business, authority, or experience.
I think that staying in one’s lane all but guarantees that there will be no growth, expansion, or break from routine. Think about a bowling lane. The ball goes down, attacks a few pins, and comes back up. Down and up, down and up. Stay in your lane. Don’t do anything different; don’t change your expectations; limit your greatest potential outcome to 10 pins and no more. Maintain the status quo. Take no risks. Stay in your lane.
I’m not a lane guy. Rather, I feel that we do our best work when we do it right alongside our counterparts from other departments, other campuses, other organizations, other industries. I feel that, when I’ve done my best work, it’s actually been difficult to determine whether I’m part of one group or another. When I’ve most appreciated my employees’ work, it’s usually because they have transcended their own pre-determined role and swerved directly into other peoples’ lanes, creating a cross-cultural win for everyone.
This week, I witnessed a series of accomplishments at my schools that seemed to be oblivious to lanes. The first was at Aviation Institute of Maintenance in Norfolk, VA, where our Chancellor, Kenneth Cooper Alexander, and I had the opportunity to meet with Captain Michael Witherspoon, Commander of the Joint Expeditionary Base at Little Creek in Norfolk, and Captain Matthew Frauenzimmer, Commanding Officer of Naval Support Activity of Hampton Roads. Dr. Alexander and I were proud to show these Naval leaders our school and discuss how AIM can be a resource for young people exiting the military and entering the civilian workforce. As the four of us enjoyed a tour of the campus from Brad Groom, our Director of Education, it became somewhat difficult to figure out what this place was. I was the dude in a suit, so was this a private school? Our Chancellor, who is also the Mayor of Norfolk, was there, so was this a city-sponsored college? Two Commanding Officers and Navy Captains were there who ran the largest Naval bases on the east coast, so is this a military institution? We were being guided by a guy with 40+ years of professional work as an aircraft mechanic and an Air Force veteran, so is this a training site for industry? What is this place?!
A certain awesomeness seems to happen when we veer into each other’s lanes—when we let collaboration guide what we do so much that it becomes difficult or impossible to even separate the individual pieces from the whole and figure out whose job is what. Another example of this happened in Virginia Beach this week at an event hosted by the Home Office for the Centura College and Tidewater Tech campuses. The event was called, “Education Department Being Audit-Ready.” From the sound of it, this sounded like an Education Department event. But when I got there, I realized that the presentation was being given by the Compliance Department—a team more commonly found in Operations, not Education. Sure enough, it was a collaborative presentation for the Centura College and Tidewater Tech Education Department provided by the Compliance department, built to weave the knowledge and functionality of these departments together.
And an incredible moment happened during a discussion between me and Marjorie DiVincenzo, the Lead Instructor for Centura College’s Limited Scope Radiation Technician program. I asked her, “What do you consider your job to be?” I was expecting her to say that she was committed to teaching high quality classes, or maybe that she was committed to molding new professionals as Medical Assistants with an understanding of how Rad Tech fit in. That’s not what she said her job is as a Lead Instructor. Her answer was: I want to make the community more aware of our program; I want to get our local hospitals involved so that we can grow this program and enroll more students.
Who was this person?! Here I am at an Education meeting, learning about Compliance, listening to a teacher who apparently thinks she’s responsible for Marketing and Admissions! But Marjorie didn’t appear to be concerned with the traditional borders in which her role might have been bound; she was not constrained by the letter of her job description; Marjorie was not limited by double-yellow lines keeping her squarely within her lane as a teacher in the Education Department. No, she was equally as concerned with the student’s greater good, with the impact that her institution could have within the medical community of Virginia, and with the positive growth that her campus could experience when more hospitals were more aware of the students who will become the medical workforce of tomorrow. Marjorie DiVincenzo is not staying in her lane!
Stark dividing lines might be good for street traffic. Lanes may be good for bowling. But I don’t think they are great for institutions, nor for impactful leaders within institutions. I feel that the more we can blur the lines between departments and between organizations, the more likely we are to be relevant to a larger community. The more we learn about each other’s roles, expertise, and motivations, the more we can benefit our communities and the employers who count on us. I’m okay with baffling people when we don’t fit the mold of a “normal career school.” We’re not normal. Normal isn’t inspiring. Normal isn’t transformational. Transcending barriers means blurring lines and striving to learn more, understand more, and be more, both within our own workplace and in the larger community.
We need find ways to learn more about the other roles around our institutions and within the employment and workforce community around us. There certainly are some inherent dangers in swerving into other lanes. Obviously, we all have a specific job to accomplish with goals, expectations, and requirements that we must accomplish. We have to keep the main thing of our jobs the main thing in our minds. And it’s essential to be respectful of the professionals within the other departments around us. But we also probably have some things to learn about those in other roles and have some things to share with them that will expand their own abilities. It’s important to put on our flicker, look at all our mirrors, and edge over into someone else’s lane for some healthy dialog about what they do as we spend a little time in their lane.
